When producing amplified music, for example by using electric guitars or other instruments, it is often desirable to distort the audio signal representing the sound of the instrument so as to derive different musical effects from the instrument.
When an audio signal representing the sound of a musical instrument is “distorted” by a distorter, the audio signal is typically “clipped”, i.e., the amplitude is clipped beyond a threshold value, thereby creating a compressed version of the signal within the clipped portions of the signal. In most cases, the threshold value can be adjusted by the user of the distorter.
Also, the amount of limiting can be varied by the choice of configuration of the distortion circuit of the distorter, and/or can be varied by the choice of diodes that are incorporated within the distortion circuit of distorter. However, distortion circuits of this type do not provide an adjustment that enables the user to affect the operation of the distortion circuit so as to adjust the amount of limiting in any way. Thus, each distortion circuit limits the audio signal in a specific way. Consequently, a musician tends to accumulate multiple distorters so the musician can have access to a choice of distortion circuits, thereby giving the musician the ability to produce a variety of distortion effects. However, this can become expensive and/or cumbersome. Moreover, the choice of currently available distortion circuits is confined to a small number of similar-sounding distortion circuits.